By Rick Cassano

HARRISON – Derek Rehage reached for the silver lining Friday night after watching his Harrison High School football team take its first loss of the season.

The Wildcats couldn’t hold a 14-point halftime lead and dropped a 24-21 decision to visiting East Central – the top-ranked Class 4A squad in Indiana -- in a Battle of I-74 rivalry clash at jam-packed Bill Kuntz Field.

“I’m excited about our future,” Rehage said. “That’s the No. 1 team in the state who beat the No. 1 team in 5A. Not a lot of people gave us a chance, and we had them down 21-7.

“I know it’s a moral victory, but our future’s so bright with this team, and we’ll get healthier as the year goes on. We’ll focus on being 0-0 and get after the (Southwest Ohio Conference) title and try to get a bye in the (Division II) playoffs.

“We’re playing really good football teams. We’re not going to win them all. This one hurts the boys, the seniors, because it is a rivalry, but they played their butts off.”

Harrison (5-1) was seeking its first 6-0 start since 2002, but the Trojans ran off a game-ending 17 straight points and got fourth-quarter interceptions from Jared Cox and Noah Long to even the series at 24-24-1.

Quarterback Brady Lawhon ran for two touchdowns and hit Kyle Davidson for a score for the Wildcats, completing 15-of-19 passes for 140 yards. David Baldock paced the HHS defense with seven tackles and an interception.

“We were underdogs, so we did better than people expected,” said Baldock, a senior outside linebacker. “We’ve just got to go after Mount Healthy next week and hit them like we wanted to hit these guys. We’ll be good. We’ll handle it at practice on Monday and get back to work.”

East Central (5-1) has long been known for its ground attack and kicked into gear after halftime by getting back to basics with a double-wing offensive approach.

Ryan Minges was a battering ram with a season-high186 yards and two touchdowns for the Trojans, and Colton Bellman rushed for 64 yards and the decisive TD with 3:55 remaining.

“They were trying to spread it out a little bit more in the first half and get outside of our linebackers and push up the field,” Baldock said. “They changed stuff up at halftime and we didn’t really change much stuff up, and they were able to work it against us and run the ball better.”

East Central collected points on its first three possessions of the second half, then ran out the clock on the ground after Long picked off a Lawhon pass with 3:15 left.

“It’s no secret we like to run the football,” Trojans coach Jake Meiners said. “In the first half Harrison did a great job of controlling the clock and we didn’t have very many possessions, so we really wanted to try to manage things a little bit better.

“We wanted to get into our double-wing offense and be able to try to control the second half. We weren’t sure if Harrison was going to make different adjustments because they’ve seen us run it before against them, but we were able to settle into that offense pretty well and keep hurting them.

“We challenged our guys at halftime. We go as far as our line takes us offensively, and they were blowing holes open tonight and our running backs were making great blocks and great carries. We put the ball in Ryan Minges’ hands. He’s a senior. He’s carried us quite a bit.”
The 6-foot-1, 221-pound Minges is a load. With him running the ball and East Central possessing a significant size advantage up front, the visitors’ offensive success was persistent after the break.

“Minges weighs more than every defensive starter we have except the nose,” Rehage said. “We knew if they got in that double wing, it was going to be tough for us to stop. It’s a very odd offense to stop. They do a great job of pulling it out when they need it.”

Minges, who also plays defensive end, now has 2,962 yards in his Trojan career. Ironically, he used to be a Harrison kid and played youth ball with a lot of the Wildcats. He said he moved to Indiana halfway through his sixth-grade year.

“I’ve got a little rivalry going on,” Minges said. “It’s incredible. It’s my favorite game of the year. I get to play against my old guys and have fun with my team now. It’s great to win and bring it back to St. Leon.”

Minges felt that East Central got tougher in the second half, and the double-wing offense is all about toughness and winning hand-to-hand battles in the trenches.

“We were definitely aggravated about the first half,” Minges said. “We came out and balled out in the second half and played the ball that we should be playing all game. The offensive guys played their hearts out, and the defense made incredible big stops.

“It was amazing, the best feeling, winning on my old field and playing here for the last time. I love my guys on Harrison. I love my guys here. I couldn’t imagine anything better than this.”

Rehage said players will always come and go for a variety of reasons, so he didn’t spend much time thinking about the fact that Minges came from Harrison.

“It’s about taking what you’ve got and moving on,” Rehage said. “I know our boys are super excited to be Harrison Wildcats and drink the juice as we say.”

Both teams had touchdowns called back in what was a penalty-filled affair – Harrison had nine penalties for 89 yards, while the Trojans had 12 penalties for 115 yards.

The Wildcats’ Ben Markarian opened the game by taking a kickoff 82 yards for a TD that got wiped off the board. Cox crossed the goal line on a 41-yard interception return with 7:34 remaining, only to see it get negated on the return.

East Central was down 21-17 when Cox appeared to give his team the lead. The Trojans responded by scoring anyway on an 8-yard run by Bellman after converting on fourth-and-10 with an 11-yard pass from Ben Bond to Parker Wegman.

Bond completed three passes in the contest for 11 yards.

“We talk a lot about controlling the controllables. You have to wash the bad to play the good,” Meiners said. “Yes we get a crazy interception and we end up getting a penalty, which obviously isn’t great. But there was a calmness about our players and they said, ‘Hey, we got this.’ Our defense holding them to zero in the second half is a huge deal.”

Blake Sterwerf kicked a 35-yard field goal to get East Central within 21-17 early in the fourth stanza. Meiners pointed out that the senior was a manager for the Trojans as a freshman.

The ECHS coach said he wasn’t surprised to find his team in a down-to-the-wire slugfest. The last three meetings with Harrison have been decided by a total of 11 points.

“It’s a physical football game. Both teams know it coming in,” Meiners said. “The game is always played like this. It’s generally lower scoring and generally played in the 20s because it’s a low-possession game and both teams try to run the football.”

The Wildcats played without tight end Christian Roether, who suffered an ankle injury last week. Rehage hopes he’s able to return in the next couple weeks.

The Harrison coach said Roether’s absence forced some changes in his squad’s offensive game plan.

“We basically had to redo our offense,” Rehage said. “We played really well for losing him and not having a true varsity-ready backup, but we ran into some of the issues we were afraid of and became a little more predictable in the second half.

“You can’t lose the turnover battle in a game like this. We just didn’t make enough plays in the second half.”

The Wildcats were limited to 81 yards on the ground -- Trey Fette’s 36 yards on nine carries led the way. Harrison has lost seven of the last eight games in this series.

Both teams are back in action next Friday. The Wildcats begins the final season of SWOC play at home against Mount Healthy, while East Central travels to Connersville (Ind.).

East Central 0-7-7-10 -- 24

Harrison 7-14-0-0 -- 21

H: Brady Lawhon 1 run (Michael Wiesemann Jr. kick)

H: Kyle Davidson 9 pass from Lawhon (Wiesemann Jr. kick)

E: Ryan Minges 2 run (Blake Sterwerf kick)

H: Lawhon 6 run (Wiesemann Jr. kick)

E: Minges 1 run (Sterwerf kick)

E: Sterwerf 35 field goal

E: Colton Bellman 8 run (Sterwerf kick)

Records: E 5-1, H 5-1